Land, Power and Prestige

English Heritage summaries. 2002/2003

EH Project Number:	3304ANL
Funded Unit:	Reading University

Project aim: To synthesise available data on Bronze Age lowland field systems in England; examining regional variations in their distribution, development and eventual demise.

Background. European communities three to four and a half thousand years ago are said to have experienced the first golden or international age. The chunk of time between 2500-750 BC was an exceptional period of rapid economic development and social change by comparison with anything that had gone on before. During this European Bronze Age, widely spaced parts of the continent were drawn together by an expanding communications network resulting in the rapid spread of new ideas, technological advances, material wealth and the movement of people. Eastern Mediterranean civilisations of great refinement flourished during this era leaving behind a rich architectural record. The achievements of societies on the fringes of Europe including Britain are harder to appreciate. Communities here never achieved the splendour of the Aegean dynasties but did experience a remarkable pace of change and extraordinary wealth and richness of artefacts between 1500- 700 BC.

Within the South East corner of Britain, Mike Rowlands theorised that there were flourishing and densely populated zones in riverine settlements along the Thames , Southern Channel coast and the East Anglian Fens ( ibid 34). These specialist enclave economies had varying degrees of dominance and success. Their political power ultimately depended on the ability to accumulate, display and distribute wealth. The drive to successfully manage available resources including the mobilisation of labour would have transformed the nature of the lived environment. Such densely populated niches or enclaves benefited from a centralisation of wealth and power greater than that in upland settlements. Rowlands admitted however that there was little evidence besides the metalwork to gain any firm insight into the success of their long distance alliance formation and exchanges other than that "they must have been producing some kind of surplus in exchange"(ibid. 34).

If productive success was such a decisive factor in these new achieving and materialistic societies, logically there should be evidence of the new value attached to productive resources. Intensive farming would have been the basis of rapid economic growth. It follows that land would become a new commodity to define, enhance, own and protect. In Britain we know this to be the case for there was a drastic reorganisation of the landscape around the needs of food production particularly during the Middle Bronze Age ( 1500-1000 BC) and access to the fertile lands became controlled .For John Barrett the drive towards agricultural intensification became the defining feature of the Later Bronze Age . He based this interpretation on the legacy of the earthwork remains of co-axial fields on the uplands such as those on the Marlborough Downs, Salisbury Plain, Dartmoor and Cranborne Chase. There was one particularly impressive example of a large lowland land block at Fengate , but it seemed to be an isolated maverick find with no comparable equal elsewhere. The construction of these formal field systems enclosing large tracts of land involved the mobilisation of the available workforce. It follows that this form of stylised field architecture should characterise the politically ascendant Thames Valley and that there should be many more instances in lowland Britain. Finding them might prove the nature of farming regimes in the richest parts of the country. That task has been impossible up to now. The data was simply not available. Developer funded excavations have changed all that.

Developer funding and landscape exploration.

Fields systems are the largest form of prehistoric monument. Commercial work provides the means to reveal these land divisions so long hidden from view. An isolated small scale investigation will not define a prehistoric enclosed landscape, but a proliferation of small scale client projects in the same locality can. Similarly the use of machine cut evaluation trenching is now a mainstay of developer funded investigation and is very effective in confirming the existence and orientation of dispersed linear features such as fence lines or ditched boundaries. Contracts tied in with civil engineering projects can also involve much grander forms of linear archaeology including road widening, bypass work, rail track construction, utility pipelaying and flood relief schemes. In effect wide transects are being cut through both urban and rural zones which can strike enclaves of formally defined prehistoric farm land. Ultimately the largest scale of works, frequently aggregate extraction, involves the recording of features over much large land blocks, often over several hundred hectares. The results derived from any of these interventions can produce negative as well as positive evidence on early agriculture and land tenure revealing contrasting zones of formally appropriated land and open environments.

The frequency and scale of developer funded projects provides a highly effective weapon in exposing the remnants of anciently enclosed lands. These boundaries often define valued or prized land; fertile soils which are likely to have attracted settlement and cultivation over a prolonged period leaving behind extremely complicated archaeological remains. Project managers are therefore faced by two dimensions of complexity. First the sheer scale of large area stripping and secondly, the investigation of potentially complex stratification normally associated with urban excavations. With growing experience and more theoretical breakthroughs it is becoming apparent that the late second and early first millennium BC field blocks are intricate creations incorporating ritualised activity. In effect the laid out grids offered a residential framework for groups whose previous life revolved around the veneration of the dead. The grid therefore becomes a new emblem for permanent living for people tied to their lands incorporating curated artefacts, cremations and placed metalwork. . Such subtleties of design and reinforcement have additional implications for the PPG16 research designs. The normal scarcity of dateable material on such ancient farmed land and the quest for sealed environmental data are additional priorities requiring more prominence in the PPG16 briefs.

The picture emerging in the research.

Developer funded archaeology has started to provide knowledge of the farming practices associated with the dramatic social changes taking place at this time. Within that abundance of new finds there is evidence of concentrated settlement, extensive field systems, long distance droveways, trackways enabling passage over marshy ground and a proliferation of enclosures. The construction of the linear field systems appears to be a regional phenomenon - confined to Southern Britain and not extending north of a line drawn between the Bristol Channel and the Wash. Within that southern zone the lowland field systems form definable niches or enclaves on intensifiable soils eg the Sussex coastal plain. Throughout the region the social significance of this gridded landscape declines by the Early Iron Age.

The advent of commercial excavation has radically changed the pace of discovery in Britain. This research has used the profusion of commercially generated finds to examine one critical development in British Prehistory. The conclusions drawn confirm that client material is a highly effective research tool for any synthetic study of nationwide social change. It can deliver to the community an enhanced understanding of the past. The very real achievements of committed field personnel , professional and amateur alike, are revealing a scale of prehistoric landscaping without parallel to date in Europe. Developer backing has produced a database of immense significance for a reassessment of the heritage of Britain. This exciting story is therefore one amongst many more that can be told. 

References:

Barrett, J.C. 1994. Fragments from Antiquity. An Archaeology of Social Life in Britain 2900 - 1200 BC. Blackwell.

Rowlands, M. 1980. Kinship, alliance and exchange in the European Bronze Age. In Barrett, J. and Bradley, R. (eds) Settlement and Society in the British Later Bronze Age. Oxford: BAR.Series 83(i). 15-55.

This page was published 08/01/04